Somewhere, I told myself, there was good blood at the back of beyond
on his line of descent. I was right, for, as he told me later, when I
had come to know him as a trusty friend, he came from a Norseman
stock. The jaw was too square and heavy, but the high-built chiselled
nose and the deep-set clear grey eyes were a "throw-back" on the old
Viking trail. Although dressed in ragged civilian clothes he looked a
huge, full-grown, muscular man; active and well developed, with the
arms of a miner and the chest of a gorilla. On one arm I remember he
had a heart with a dagger through it tattooed in blue and red.

I heard of him first as one to be shunned and feared. For it was said
that "when in drink" he would pick up the barrack-room fender with one
hand and hurl it across the room. I was told that he was a master of
the art of swearing--that he could pour forth a continual flow of
oaths for a full five minutes without repeating one single "cuss."

My interest was immediately aroused. I smelt adventure, and I was on
the adventure trail. Hawk was not in my barrack-room, and therefore I
knew but little of him while in the old country. I heard that he had
been galloper-dispatch-rider to Lord Kitchener in South Africa, and I
tried to get him to talk about it. As an "artist's model," for a
canvas to be called "The Buccaneer," Hawk was perfect. I never saw a
man so splendidly developed.

And Hawk was fifty years old! You would take him for thirty-nine or
so.

But "drink and the devil had done for the rest"--Hawk himself
acknowledged it. His vices were the vices of a strong man, and when he
was drunk he was "the very devil."